…discussions and photos of the world of roses…

The Latest

If you live (or don’t) in a warm and dry region you need to subscribe to Ludwig Taschner’s monthly newsletter Talking Roses. Ludwig’s rose nursery in South Africa is a major supplier of roses both cut and plants to the SA market.

Now I can hear you thinking…”why would I be interested in rose culture in South Africa?” Well, he writes one of the best newsletters out there and fills it with practical hands-on information. Just one thing to remember, he writes for South Africa and the seasons below the Equator are reversed from our northern hemisphere gardens. So right now Ludwig is writing about the hot dry summer they are experiencing. Just file the great ideas from SA for reference later.

Ludwig Roses represents a number of European rose companies, especially Kordes Roses from his native Germany. He also hybridizes roses for SA.

Eunice School (SPElusho(N)

Ludwig’s rose ‘Eunice School’ is described as…”not just good, but very, very good….” He states it holds both well on the bush and has long life for cutting. Too bad we can’t import from South Africa!

To subscribe to the newsletter email the nursery at: talkingroses@ludwigsroses.co.za and ask to be put on the posting list for TalkingRoses.

Dr. Walter Lewis shared his taxonomic research into the native roses of North America which will soon be published in an upcoming volume of Flora of North America. He is a world renowned scholar and leader in the area of rose taxonomy and has been collecting, characterizing, and publishing on rose species for over 50 years. He has inspired, educated, and mentored other scientists in the understanding and continues research of species roses.

Dr. Lewis and his wife, Memory celebrated their 57th wedding anniversary at this program. He surprised his wife at the program by naming a new subspecies of Rosa for her!

Dr. Malcolm Manners along with attendee Jill Perry

Dr. Malcolm Manners is a Professor of Horticultural Science at Florida Southern College, Lakeland, Florida, where he teaches courses in general horticulture, tropical fruits, horticultural pests and diseases, plant physiology, and plant nutrition. Since 1984, he has managed FSC’s rose mosaic virus heat therapy program, which cures roses of virus disease and makes the healthy propagating material available to the nursery industry.

Gene Waering and Pat Shanley

Pat Shanley, Vice-President of the American Rose Society and president of the Manhattan Rose Society and Gene Waering, President of the Jacksonville Rose Society presented a PowerPoint program on the new American Garden Rose Selections™ program which is modeled after the German ADR testing program. This new rose testing program is designed to replace the All-American Rose Selection (AARS) which has closed its doors. The new program is heavily weighted toward disease resistance and will promote different roses for the various regions of the US. You can expect the first awards from this program in the spring of 2017.

The Great Rosarians of the World 13 West will be held at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, California, will be celebrated on Saturday, February 2, 2013. The program will be held from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm in Friends’ Hall. There will be a reception following the program. Tickets are $10.00 each and reservations required. To obtain tickets please call The Huntington at 626.405.3504.

This year we are honoring two outstanding Rosarians, Dr. Walter H. Lewis and Malcolm Manners, whose work has promoted the growing of roses and extended our knowledge of roses.

Dr. Walter H. Lewis

Dr. Lewis is a world renowned rose taxonomist who has been collecting, characterizing, and publishing on species roses for over 50 years. Dr. Lewis has focused his research primarily on rose species native to North America and has contributed more to our understanding of these roses than anyone else. He earned his Ph.D. in the 1950s traveling and characterizing several North American rose species. He documented their geographical ranges and variation for morphological and cytological traits. He continues to document new and disjunct populations and report on them.

Recently Dr. Lewis completed the definitive chapter on North American species roses that will be within an upcoming volume of the Flora of North America. He has expanded his love and research for roses through graciously mentoring and encouraging other scientists. He is semi-retired now after having held joint appointments at the Missouri Botanical Garden and Washington University.

With an increased emphasis on pest resistance, drought tolerance, and winter hardiness in modern roses, species roses have come to the forefront as key sources of such traits. His research has proven of great benefit in helping breeders better recognize the traits species contain and understand their reproductive biology in order to more successfully obtain desirable hybrids.

Malcolm Manners

Dr. Malcolm Manners has been growing roses for nearly 30 years, mostly old garden roses types, but some modern roses as well. He is a Professor of Horticultural Science at Florida Southern College, where he teaches courses in general horticulture, tropical fruits, horticultural pest and diseases, plant physiology, and plant nutrition.

He was born in Pennsylvania and moved to Florida with his family when they moved when he was 11 years old. He earned the bachelor’s degree in biology and chemistry from Anderson College (Indiana), then the M.S. and Ph.D. at the University of Florida, majoring in horticulture (tropical fruit physiology). He started teaching at Florida Southern College in 1981 and has been there ever since.

Since 1984, he has managed FSC’s rose mosaic virus heat therapy program, which cures roses of virus disease and makes the healthy propagating material available to the nursery industry. In conjunction with that program, he manages a collection of approximately 200 rose varieties, in two campus gardens and the college greenhouses. Most of the certified mosaic free old garden roses now grown in the U.S. came through the Florida Southern program.

In 1990, he imported a collection of Bermuda’s “mystery roses,” and it is from FSC’s gardens that much of the U.S. stock of those roses has been propagated. He has also worked closely with molecular biologist D. Nancy Morvillo at Florida Southern, researching the relationships of various roses, especially the older Noisettes, with DNA analysis.

For the past several years, his classes have propagated roses for the New York Heritage Rose District, and on two occasions, he took groups of FSC students to New York to help plant the roses and train children in propagation techniques.

He serves as a trustee of the Heritage Rose Foundation, and has served on the American Rose Society’s committees on rose registrations and rose classification, and the old garden rose committee. He is also active in the Central Florida Heritage Rose Society.

In addition to teaching horticulture in the USA, he frequently volunteers through USAID’s Farmer-toFarmer program, training growers of fruits and other crops in some of the world’s poorest regions.

Please join us in celebrating the work of these two Great Rosarians on Saturday, February 2, 2013, at The Huntington from 1:00 pm to 5:00 pm.

Tickets are $10.00 each and reservations required. To obtain tickets please call The Huntington at 626.405.3504.

This just in from a teacher who’s students were studying roses. They somehow discovered a link to the ‘old’ Huntington Library website and found the links archived there very useful for their project. That website was taken down several years ago but seems to still have a life out there in the world of lost websites! It is interesting just how profoundly changing the GOOGLE has become in so short a time. Now every secondary level student has this powerhouse of knowledge at their fingertips 24/7. It is our responsibility to make sure the information out there is correct and ALWAYS AVAILABLE!

My students and I are so happy we came across your page: http://huntingtonbotanical.org/Rose/roselinks.htm. Your page has offered us some great resources (on roses) that we were able to use. 🙂 Gracias! We’re currently doing a fun unit on flowers…and roses happen to be a mutual favorite!

Since we used a few of your resources, my students thought it was only fair to share one they found…they found it to be pretty useful too: http://www.odealarose.com/19-rose-gardens . ((I also told them I was going to award them some extra credit!)) 🙂

Do you think you could add their suggestion to your page? They’d love to make a contribution!

Our line up of honorees for GROW 13 is now complete. We will be honoring Dr. Walter H. Lewis, senior botanists at Missouri Botanical Garden and Professor Emeritus at Geroge Washington University, St. Louis, MO for his work on species roses.

He will be joining Dr. Malcolm Manners as co-honoree at GROW West on Saturday, February 2, 2013 at The Huntington Library, Art Collections, and Botanical Gardens, San Marino, CA. And they will reprise their programs for GROW East sponsored by the Manhattan Rose Society at Queens Botanical Garden on Saturday, June 1, 2013.

This promises to be a spectacular program and you will get a twofer, two major figures in rose research for the price of one!

We will be posting more details on these exciting programs as they become available.

The Great Rosarians of the World™ Steering Committee is happy to announce that Dr. Malcolm Manners of Southern Florida College will be one of our 2013 honorees. Malcolm is the Chairman of the Horticultural Science Department and a well know researcher on Rose Mosaic Virus. In 2008 Malcolm received his second Volunteer Service Award from the President’s Council on Service and Civic Participation on behalf of the President of the United States to recognize the best in American sprit and encourage all Americans to contribute through volunteer service. He spent two weeks in Kyrgyzstan during 2007 as part of Winrock International’s Farmer-to-Farmer Volunteer Program, providing horticultural consulting and training.He has participated in volunteer efforts in Egypt, Armenia, Turkmenistan, India, Mozambique, Bangladesh, Ethiopia and Nigeria. The program is funded by the United States Agency for International Development (USAID) and currently operates in 25 countries. In fact when contacted by GROW about his being the 2013 honoree Malcolm was preparing to leave momentarily for Bangladesh.

Malcolm is well know for his work promoting Old Garden Roses and educating gardeners on their use in the home garden.

The Great Rosarians of the World East program will be presented by the Manhattan Rose Society in New York City at Queens Botanical Garden over May 31 through June 2, 2013. An announcement on tickets for this event will be posted after GROW West.

Programs are still being organized so please follow this blog for more information as it is made available.

This year’s honoree is Alain Meilland from the family that introduced one of the world’s greatest roses, ‘Peace’

Join rosarians from all over at The Huntington this coming January 21-22 to honor this Great Rosarian and his family’s continued influence on modern roses. We are in for a treat sharing his experiences and knowledge on America’s Favorite Flower, the rose.

The Great Rosarians of the World Annual Lecture Series is an ongoing program of The Huntington Rose Garden. It was founded in 2001 to honor the women and men who have made significant contributions to our love and knowledge of the rose. M. Meilland joins a distinguished list of honorees that include the likes of: Peter Beales, Ralph Moore, Roger Phillips and Martyn Rix, Miriam Wilkins, Wilhelm Kordes, and David Austin.

The GROW program is focused on our love of roses and is designed for a broad of interests from the dedicated rosarian to the casual gardener who just wants to learn a bit more about one of our favorite flowers. There is plenty of time in the schedule to connect with others who share our love of the rose to learn and share. Please join us and honor this Great Rosarian!

Program Schedule

Saturday, January 21

1:00 to 3:00 Growing Old Garden Roses Registration in Botanical Center (meet in Rose Garden or Teaching Greenhouse in case of weather)

I have just heard from Katsuhiko Maebara, Chairman of the International Heritage Rose Conference to be held in Sakura, Japan, in May of this year that they are regretfully having to cancel the conference because of the “unprecedented natural calamities that hit this country on the 11th of March, devastating many cities and towns in the northern areas of the mainland, and claiming thousands of lives. Besides, they caused an accident in a nuclear power station, raising the fear of radioactive contamination in some regions.”

Our hearts go out to our rose friends and all the people of Japan in these difficult times. I know all of us who had been asked to present programs, and those attending the conference send our thoughts to the organizing committee with our best wishes for the quick recovery of their country.